More Google+ in Google News

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Google has expanded its Google+ integration to include Google News. Now when looking at the top stories of the day users can also check out the latest Google+ posts on it.

"To continue to expand your views on the news, we are adding three new features for those using our US edition: larger images on our main page; a new realtime coverage page to surface the latest articles and commentary; and relevant Google+ posts for a new social perspective," Scott Zuccarino, product manager for Google News, wrote on the Google News blog.

Supposedly this enables a more social view of the news, including possible comments from politicians or journalists.

Indeed, our first attempt was to look up a story on unemployment and were greeted with a post from president-hopeful Mitt Romney: "A lot of Americans are having hard times & the unemployment report is not good news. This is not progress; it is very disappointing." We're not sure that illuminated much, but he's definitely a politician.

The features will only appear if you are using Google+. If not, or if you hate the new features, simply log out of Google+ and try Google News without the social element.

So far there have been some vocal critics of the new integration, mainly because it ignores Twitter or Facebook comments on the subject, but we think it hardly warrants criticism. It will likely just be ignored.

Published at 12:23 PM PDT on May 4, 2012 | Updated at 12:29 PM PDT on May 4, 2012